Coronavirus: Field staff in tears

Hyderabad: The marketing employees and executives have been hit hard in the corona pandemic with some of them losing jobs while some others are retained by their companies but with 20 to 50 percent reduced monthly pay due to slump in business.

Once corona came into the picture from March this year, marketing executives from most sectors were unable to perform duties which involve moving on the field from one place to another and also to different places on a daily basis to get orders, fulfill monthly targets.

Work from Home has become the alternative option for employees working in the private sector apart from software professionals who have been used to this form of work earlier also. However, marketing employees or executives particularly those from the real estate, travel and tourism, insurance sector, manufacturing sector cannot work in WFH method due to obvious reasons.

Realtors having land ventures in and around the state capital including Ghatkesar, Yadadri, Shamshabad etc. usually depend on marketing employees to sell their plots. Keeping hundreds of pamphlets and some brochures of the real estate ventures, the marketing staff visit residential areas and colonies and also stay put near shopping malls, busy junctions distributing them to the passersby and convincing them to buy plots as an investment for future. This practice has stopped for last six months or so and such staff has also lost jobs.

M Maheshwar Reddy (name changed), a property dealer, said that they are now promoting their ventures on social media and on WhatsApp groups aiming to reach out to prospective buyers. Until the corona vaccine comes, there is no chance of door-to-door marketing for revival, he predicted.

Marketing guys selling products like vacuum cleaners, water purifiers etc by giving a demo in residential colonies could not carry on with their regular duties also.

Meanwhile, insurance firms barring health insurance to an extent had a forgetful last six months. Marketing executives could not move on the field freely like before and understandably their targets were also not met.

However, one good thing many noted firms did was retaining marketing executives working with them and proving merit for quite some time. Instead of laying them off, companies have retained them and are paying reduced monthly salaries. Their services are being used in other wings for the time being and once things come back to normal the marketing staff will be allowed to swing into action.